Art in Review; 'The Project in the Projects'

By HOLLAND COTTER

Published: June 3, 2005

The New York art dealer Hugo Martinez represents a number of well-known graffiti artists, some veterans of the classical era of the 1970's and 80's and others new on the scene. A few years ago, Mr. Martinez exhibited them in a Chelsea gallery, then in a space in Brooklyn. Recently he has begun to incorporate their work into utopian public projects.

The first of these, which made its debut late last year, was a pediatrics clinic on West 207th Street in upper Manhattan. Sponsored by a medical group, the clinic was designed by a two-person Dutch firm called Kaptein Roodnat, and its interior was entirely decorated, with enchanting results, by artists whose work has traditionally, and often illegally, been produced on the street.

Now Mr. Martinez has enlisted the same design team in a second collaborative work, or ''intervention,'' this one involving the redecoration of a studio apartment in a low-income housing project on the Lower East Side. Kaptein-Roodnat have made subtle and reversible structural changes to increase the flow of light and air in a small space. Some 15 artists, including Kez 5, Ghost, NATO and VFR, contribute painted sculptures that double as ornaments and modular furniture.

The design is intended as a malleable prototype, a sampler of decorative possibilities -- including the choice of individual artists -- available to a project resident wanting a customized makeover. Naturally, the appeal of any or all of the options will be a matter of individual taste, too much for some people, too little for others.

But then, the ''Project in the Projects'' is as much about philosophy as it is about practicality. It is, in a sense, a 21st-century update on the kind of aesthetic domestic environment, at once harmonious and stimulating, envisioned by Mondrian. And this concept seems particularly germane to the present, when housing costs are steep and the mainstream art world is working hard to squeeze art back into the confines of marketable objects.

No doubt all of these issues, in which art, design and politics meet, will generate some bracing heat during a symposium that Mr. Martinez and his artists will present tomorrow night at Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen Street, Lower East Side, from 6 to 8 p.m. Information: (212)619-2149. HOLLAND COTTER